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It's an excellent demonstration of the main issue I have with the Gemini family of models, they always go "above and beyond" to do a lot of stuff, even if I exp

It's an excellent demonstration of the main issue I have with the Gemini family of models, they always go "above and beyond" to do a lot of stuff, even if I explicitly prompt against it. In this case, most of the SVG ends up consisting not just of a bike and a pelican, but clouds, a sun, a hat on the pelican and so much more. Exactly the same thing happens when you code, it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors, and it keeps adding code comments no matter what I say. Very frustrating experience overall.

enobrev 9mo ago
I have the same issue. Even when I ask it to do code-reviews and very explicitly tell it not to change files, it will occasionally just start "fixing" things.
- mikepurvis 9mo ago
  I find Copilot leans the other way. It'll myopically focus its work in the exact function I point it at, even when it's clear that adding a new helper would be a logical abstraction to share behaviour with the function right beside it. Overall, I think it's probably better that it stay focused, and allow me to prompt it with "hey, go ahead and refactor these two functions" rather than the other way around. At the same time, really the ideal would be to have it proactively ask, or even pitch the refactor as a colleague would, like "based on what I see of this function, it would make most sense to XYZ, do you think that makes sense? <sure go ahead> <no just keep it a minimal change>" Or perhaps even better, simply pursue both changes in parallel and present them as A/B options for the human reviewer to select between.
gavinray 9mo ago
Do you have Personalization Instructions set up for your LLM models? You can make their responses fairly dry/brief.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  I'm mostly using them via my own harnesses, so I have full control of the system prompts and so on. And no matter what I try, Gemini keeps "helpfully" adding code comments every now and then. With every other model, "- Don't add code comments" tends to be enough, but with Gemini I'm not sure how I could stop the comments from eventually appearing.
  - WarmWash 9mo ago
    I'm pretty sure it writes comments for itself, not for the user. I always let the models comment as much as they want, because I feel it makes the context more robust, especially when cycling contexts often to keep them fresh. There is a tradeoff though, as comments do consumer context. But I tend to pretty liberally dispense of instances and start with a fresh window.
    - embedding-shape 9mo ago
      > I'm pretty sure it writes comments for itself, not for the user Yeah, that sounds worse than "trying to helpful". Read the code instead, why add indirection in that way, just to be able to understand what other models understand without comments?
      - Radle 9mo ago
        The Indirection is on purpose, it works like a continued chain of thought.
        embedding-shape 9mo ago
        Yeah, I'm just doubtful Gemini could ever be considered a "better model" if it needs to put "chain of thought" artifacts into my source code, considering that none of the other models seems to need that to write better code than Gemini.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
zengineer 9mo ago
true, whenever I ask Gemini to help me with a prompt for generating an image of XYZ, it generates the image.
mullingitover 9mo ago
> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors Just asking "Explain what this service does?" turns into [No response for three minutes...] +729 -522
- kylec 9mo ago
  "I don't know what did it, but here's what it does now"
- cowmoo728 9mo ago
  it's also so aggressive about taking out debug log statements and in-progress code. I'll ask it to fill in a new function somewhere else and it will remove all of the half written code from the piece I'm currently working on.
  - chankstein38 9mo ago
    I ended up adding a "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO, OPT TO ADD MORE OF IT" to my user instructions and that has _somewhat_ fixed the problem but introduced a new problem where, no matter what I'm talking to it about, it tries to add logging. Even if it's not a code problem. I've had it explain that I could setup an ESP32 with a sensor so that I could get logging from it then write me firmware for it.
    - bratwurst3000 9mo ago
      "I've had it explain that I could setup an ESP32 with a sensor so that I could get logging from it then write me firmware for it." lol did you try it? This so far from everything ratinonal
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
    - sd9 9mo ago
      If it's adding too much logging now, have you tried softening the instruction about adding more? "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO. If unsure, bias towards introducing sensible logging." Or just "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO."
tyfon 9mo ago
I was using gemini antigravity in opencode a few weeks ago before they started banning everyone for that and I got into the habit of writing "do x, then wait for instructions". That helped quite a bit but it would still go off on it's own from time to time.
neya 9mo ago
> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors This has not been my experience. I do Elixir primarily and Gemini has helped build some really cool products and massive refactors along the way. And it would even pick up security issues and potential optimizations along the way What HAS been an issue constantly though was randomly the model will absolutely not respond at all and some random error would occur which is embarrassing for a company like Google with the infrastructure they own.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Out of curiosity, do you have any public projects (with public source code) you've made exclusively with Gemini, so one could take a look? I've tried a bunch of times to use Gemini to at least finish something small but I always end up sufficiently frustrated to abort it as the instruction-following seems so bad.
  - neya 9mo ago
    That's a good idea. I will publish something open source. Gemini has Pro, Thinking and Flash. The pro is the one I'm referring to. The thinking, I haven't used it much for development though.
JLCarveth 9mo ago
Every time I have tried using `gemini-cli` it just thinks endlessly and never actually gives a response.
h14h 9mo ago
Would be really interesting to see an "Eager McBeaver" bench around this concept. When doing real work, a model's ability to stay within the bounds of a given task has almost become more important than its raw capabilities now that every frontier model is so dang good. Every one of these models is so great at propelling the ship forward, that I increasingly care more and more about which models are the easiest to steer in the direction I actually want to go.
- cglan 9mo ago
  being TOO steerable is another issue though. Codex is very steerable to a fault, and will gladly "monkey paw" your requests to a fault. Claude Opus will ignore your instructions and do what it thinks is "right" and just barrel forward. Both are bad and papering over the actual issue which is these models don't really have the ability to actually selectively choose their behavior per issue (ie ask for followup where needed, ignore users where needed, follow instructions where needed). Behavior is largely global
  - kees99 9mo ago
    I my experience Claude gradually stops being opinionated as task at hand becomes more arcane. I frequently add "treat the above as a suggestion, and don't hesitate to push back" to change requests, and it seems to help quite a bit.
    - cglan 9mo ago
      Yeah that happens to me too. It’s hard to know where it’s going to break off and follow instructions too well vs use it as a tip. Idk it’s all tiring
- h14h 9mo ago
  For sure. I imagine it'd be pretty difficult to evaluate the "correct" amount of steer-ability. You'd probably just have to measure a delta in eagerness on a single same task between when given highly-specified prompts, and more open-ended prompts. Probably not dissimilar from how artificialanalysis.ai does their "omniscience index".
apitman 9mo ago
This matches my experience using Gemini CLI to code. It would also frequently get stuck in loops. It was so bad compared to Codex that I feel like I must have been doing something fundamentally wrong.
msteffen 9mo ago
> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors Not like human programmers. I would never do this and have never struggled with it in the past, no...
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Fairer comparison would be against other models, which are typically better at instruction following. You say "don't change anything not explicitly mentioned" or "Don't add any new code comments" and they tend to follow that.
Yizahi 9mo ago
Asking LLM programs to "not do the thing" often results in them tripping and generating output including that "thing", since those are simply the tokens which will enter the input. I always try to rephrase query the way that all my instructions have only "positive" forms - "do only this" or "do it only in that way" or "do it only for those parameters requested" etc. Can't say if that helps much, but it is possible.
- kolinko 9mo ago
  Which is how it works with people as well

enobrev 9mo ago

I have the same issue. Even when I ask it to do code-reviews and very explicitly tell it not to change files, it will occasionally just start "fixing" things.

mikepurvis 9mo ago
I find Copilot leans the other way. It'll myopically focus its work in the exact function I point it at, even when it's clear that adding a new helper would be a logical abstraction to share behaviour with the function right beside it. Overall, I think it's probably better that it stay focused, and allow me to prompt it with "hey, go ahead and refactor these two functions" rather than the other way around. At the same time, really the ideal would be to have it proactively ask, or even pitch the refactor as a colleague would, like "based on what I see of this function, it would make most sense to XYZ, do you think that makes sense? <sure go ahead> <no just keep it a minimal change>" Or perhaps even better, simply pursue both changes in parallel and present them as A/B options for the human reviewer to select between.

gavinray 9mo ago

Do you have Personalization Instructions set up for your LLM models? You can make their responses fairly dry/brief.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
I'm mostly using them via my own harnesses, so I have full control of the system prompts and so on. And no matter what I try, Gemini keeps "helpfully" adding code comments every now and then. With every other model, "- Don't add code comments" tends to be enough, but with Gemini I'm not sure how I could stop the comments from eventually appearing.
- WarmWash 9mo ago
  I'm pretty sure it writes comments for itself, not for the user. I always let the models comment as much as they want, because I feel it makes the context more robust, especially when cycling contexts often to keep them fresh. There is a tradeoff though, as comments do consumer context. But I tend to pretty liberally dispense of instances and start with a fresh window.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    > I'm pretty sure it writes comments for itself, not for the user Yeah, that sounds worse than "trying to helpful". Read the code instead, why add indirection in that way, just to be able to understand what other models understand without comments?
    - Radle 9mo ago
      The Indirection is on purpose, it works like a continued chain of thought.
      - embedding-shape 9mo ago
        Yeah, I'm just doubtful Gemini could ever be considered a "better model" if it needs to put "chain of thought" artifacts into my source code, considering that none of the other models seems to need that to write better code than Gemini.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]

zengineer 9mo ago

true, whenever I ask Gemini to help me with a prompt for generating an image of XYZ, it generates the image.

mullingitover 9mo ago

> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors Just asking "Explain what this service does?" turns into [No response for three minutes...] +729 -522

kylec 9mo ago
"I don't know what did it, but here's what it does now"
cowmoo728 9mo ago
it's also so aggressive about taking out debug log statements and in-progress code. I'll ask it to fill in a new function somewhere else and it will remove all of the half written code from the piece I'm currently working on.
- chankstein38 9mo ago
  I ended up adding a "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO, OPT TO ADD MORE OF IT" to my user instructions and that has _somewhat_ fixed the problem but introduced a new problem where, no matter what I'm talking to it about, it tries to add logging. Even if it's not a code problem. I've had it explain that I could setup an ESP32 with a sensor so that I could get logging from it then write me firmware for it.
  - bratwurst3000 9mo ago
    "I've had it explain that I could setup an ESP32 with a sensor so that I could get logging from it then write me firmware for it." lol did you try it? This so far from everything ratinonal
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - sd9 9mo ago
    If it's adding too much logging now, have you tried softening the instruction about adding more? "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO. If unsure, bias towards introducing sensible logging." Or just "NEVER REMOVE LOGGING OR DEBUGGING INFO."

tyfon 9mo ago

I was using gemini antigravity in opencode a few weeks ago before they started banning everyone for that and I got into the habit of writing "do x, then wait for instructions". That helped quite a bit but it would still go off on it's own from time to time.

neya 9mo ago

> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors This has not been my experience. I do Elixir primarily and Gemini has helped build some really cool products and massive refactors along the way. And it would even pick up security issues and potential optimizations along the way What HAS been an issue constantly though was randomly the model will absolutely not respond at all and some random error would occur which is embarrassing for a company like Google with the infrastructure they own.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
Out of curiosity, do you have any public projects (with public source code) you've made exclusively with Gemini, so one could take a look? I've tried a bunch of times to use Gemini to at least finish something small but I always end up sufficiently frustrated to abort it as the instruction-following seems so bad.
- neya 9mo ago
  That's a good idea. I will publish something open source. Gemini has Pro, Thinking and Flash. The pro is the one I'm referring to. The thinking, I haven't used it much for development though.

JLCarveth 9mo ago

Every time I have tried using `gemini-cli` it just thinks endlessly and never actually gives a response.

h14h 9mo ago

Would be really interesting to see an "Eager McBeaver" bench around this concept. When doing real work, a model's ability to stay within the bounds of a given task has almost become more important than its raw capabilities now that every frontier model is so dang good. Every one of these models is so great at propelling the ship forward, that I increasingly care more and more about which models are the easiest to steer in the direction I actually want to go.

cglan 9mo ago
being TOO steerable is another issue though. Codex is very steerable to a fault, and will gladly "monkey paw" your requests to a fault. Claude Opus will ignore your instructions and do what it thinks is "right" and just barrel forward. Both are bad and papering over the actual issue which is these models don't really have the ability to actually selectively choose their behavior per issue (ie ask for followup where needed, ignore users where needed, follow instructions where needed). Behavior is largely global
- kees99 9mo ago
  I my experience Claude gradually stops being opinionated as task at hand becomes more arcane. I frequently add "treat the above as a suggestion, and don't hesitate to push back" to change requests, and it seems to help quite a bit.
  - cglan 9mo ago
    Yeah that happens to me too. It’s hard to know where it’s going to break off and follow instructions too well vs use it as a tip. Idk it’s all tiring
h14h 9mo ago
For sure. I imagine it'd be pretty difficult to evaluate the "correct" amount of steer-ability. You'd probably just have to measure a delta in eagerness on a single same task between when given highly-specified prompts, and more open-ended prompts. Probably not dissimilar from how artificialanalysis.ai does their "omniscience index".

apitman 9mo ago

This matches my experience using Gemini CLI to code. It would also frequently get stuck in loops. It was so bad compared to Codex that I feel like I must have been doing something fundamentally wrong.

msteffen 9mo ago

> it's almost impossible to get Gemini to not do "helpful" drive-by-refactors Not like human programmers. I would never do this and have never struggled with it in the past, no...

embedding-shape 9mo ago
Fairer comparison would be against other models, which are typically better at instruction following. You say "don't change anything not explicitly mentioned" or "Don't add any new code comments" and they tend to follow that.

Yizahi 9mo ago

Asking LLM programs to "not do the thing" often results in them tripping and generating output including that "thing", since those are simply the tokens which will enter the input. I always try to rephrase query the way that all my instructions have only "positive" forms - "do only this" or "do it only in that way" or "do it only for those parameters requested" etc. Can't say if that helps much, but it is possible.

kolinko 9mo ago
Which is how it works with people as well